That pat answer again? Apples and Oranges...

Get this into your head: The fucking kernel is the fucking kernel alright? It is one fucking thing. Yes, people refer to it as a "monolithic kernel" to contrast with a "microkernel" but , it is one fucking thing. Got it? Next time someone complains about the monolithic design of systemd and you feel the words "but the kernel..." welling up in your throat, just slap yourself until you start to remember words like "context" ok?

--*I*-- use cgroups copiously and will not use systemd, so, not really plus for systemd...maybe a "not minus".

mod up please, I'm so tired of seeing that irrelevant myth blog trotted out as if it's a trump card.

No one thinks udev is PID 1 , but there are people who think POS is so integrated it might as well be. Calling udev PID 1 is just people trying to win an argument. Like "debunking" a bunch of "myths" no one holds while ignoring real and valid complaints. It's about WINNING for them.

"Systemd is what happens when inexperienced people with high IQ fly off on a tagent without engineering ability."

Exactly. There is no doubt that he's a very smart person who can code, but his ideas suck. Dependencies, political pressure, and inexperienced young windows refugees are why we are where we are now...

"Myth: systemd makes it impossible to run syslog"

Stupid. NO ONE was saying that so what's the point of debunking this non-existent myth? Journald is a bad idea and that's not a myth it's a FACT.

Look any name is going to be better than P OS / Linux.

Semantics aren't enough to call that a myth, doesn't matter how often that link gets posted. It's a monolith and that's all there is to it.

Tell me about it. I won't even sync anymore unless I have time to go to the forums first and make sure there wasn't a coup and systemd is now required on Gentoo.

  * Last emerge --sync was 63d 2h 4m 11s ago.

There isn't a solution to that. You have to talk to other points, and you have to do so from a connection you are on. That information, on ANY network in the world, is inevitable.

The only thing you can do is obscure it as much as possible so that people can't tell WHAT you did over the connection, or WHAT you passed to those others. They will be able to know who they were, but unless you can introduce sufficient plausible deniability (with Tor, that's just by using random people as the next hop), you can't do anything about that.

I don't think that's a problem we should waste time trying to solve. You aren't going to be able to obscure your endpoint's knowledge when 100% of the time someone is paying money for that endpoint to be connected to other endpoints. We do not have a darknet.

But it's also not that big a deal. With proper encryption and enough fake / routing data running through your connection with that encryption (and PFS), it's meaningless. All that can happen is someone can say "you were online, and so was John". If that's enough to convict you, you have bigger problems than the protocol of the network you used.

Google won the search wars because it ignored what content providers thought should be top of the listings (but let them buy ads), and put what search USERS should be top of the listings. That's how it got where it is and why it's stayed where it is. That's why there are entire businesses based around trying to get your site to the top of Google without getting chucked off their listings - because it's not as easy as just asking, or paying, or tricking Google.

Hence, if ".buy" suddenly starts getting to tops of listings where you have no reason or interest of it being there, then Google will suffer - as well as ".buy"

Decent search made domain names obsolete. I don't even know the domain of many of my favourite sites, but I know an exact Google search that will list them in the top 10 if I ever need them (e.g. I lose my bookmarks). That's why I don't get why people still are buying anything more than a single, relevant domain for themselves.

Seriously, what difference do you get in search rankings if you search from a mobile? Google knows you're on mobile. You can search for mobile terms. Now how many of those results are actually of ".mobi" sites?

TLD's and domain names are money-grabs. They only have any effect on "dumb" search engines that are already selling your entire front page to the highest bidder.

Agreed.

But, please, what makes you think that Apple, or even Samsung, aren't doing exactly the same?

Apple can install stuff on your device when it feels like it. In fact, you have even less control over an Apple devices and its whims. You'll happily plug in your Exchange details into the Apple device, you have no idea what it is or isn't doing with that. Apple doesn't even have permission systems. You either install, or not. And Apple spyware is just as - if not more - rampant.

So, your concern is really about modern devices, not anything to do with the meat of the story - encryption.

P.S. With Android, you can see the source, and build from clean source, without any Google services whatsoever if you want. People have done it for you. Almost every big-selling Android phone is supported. You can get root access and check everything you like. And then encryption really means something.

"significantly"

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

I really shouldn't be getting my tech news from sites that are basically a day behind BBC News.

Anecdotal or not, almost everyone I come into contact with who has an iPhone is either living with a smashed screen or had to take it back to Apple to get the screen replaced after smashing it.

I do not see as many, if any, of non-Apple phones that are smashed as easily.

Personally, maybe I'm just not as clumsy, but I've dropped my phone any number of times and even kicked it accidentally as I dropped it and smashed it into a wall... and it wasn't even scratched. I don't think I've ever managed to break a phone like that, and I've had some spectacular drops in the past (plastic covers and batteries flying all over the room, but just put it back together and it worked).